Tag: A.I.

Rain strategist and cofounder Noel Thevenet sat down with content strategist Susan Langmann to talk about how the A.I. revolution is impacting brand value. Here are excerpts from their conversation.

Noel: So, is brand value at risk in this everything A.I. age?

​Susan: Yes and no. We’ve seen major brands screw up and get roasted by the public because they placed creativity solely in the “hands” of artificial intelligence. The most notable is Coca-Cola’s notoriously A.I.ed 2025 Christmas ad. Without human oversight, A.I. can erode brand trust, credibility and ultimately value.

Noel: Was the misstep really A.I. or leadership?

Susan: Clearly leadership. It’s easy just to place the blame on A.I., but as any marketer and creative knows, technology can only go so far. Human-led judgement, oversight, and creative discernment are increasingly critical in an A.I. driven world. Left in the wrong hands, leadership can mistake A.I. output for ‘good enough’ and undervalue what it takes to create and build authentic brand value.

Noel: Especially when the wrong hands have six fingers! So, how do brands prevent “good enough” from becoming the standard?​

Susan: Now that is the theme of 2026. We’ve seen reams of articles on A.I. slop. Brands are now wading through all the A.I.-generated content and trying to figure out how to, literally, get rid of it! Or at least tame it and have seasoned writers fix it. We see this time and time again. A new technology. Loads of excitement and way too much careless use of it. It may have seemed like a great idea at the time, but now the A.I.-led content issue is a major problem for brands. As in your discussion with Bill (Copywriting in an A.I. World), yes, there is definitely a place for A.I., just make sure it’s in the right hands. Humans are superior in judgment, reasoning, and discernment. And, most importantly, creativity!

Noel: Bill also mentioned how A.I. feeds on itself — a classic case of “garbage in, garbage out.” (Excuse the em-dash!)

Susan: Absolutely! And, justice for the em-dash!

Noel:  What should brands never outsource to A.I.?

​Susan: The final say. We all use generative A.I. — the kind used in chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT — in our day-to-day work. Sure, chatbots are reasonably good sparring partners, but after a while, you spot their limits. The output is dry. It lacks human curiosity, experimentation, and novelty. And brands are seeing this. They handed over too much in the early days. They now have to find the right processes and tools to ensure that integrating A.I. platforms into their marketing stack doesn’t overtake human-led decision-making and judgment. Great brands stand the test of time, but only if they are smart in how they create and communicate value in a human-driven way.

“Sure, chatbots are reasonably good sparring partners, but after a while, you spot their limits.”

Susan Langman – Head Content Strategist, Rain

Noel: What happens when brands blur that line?​ I’m going to guess that it starts with “s”.

Susan: Slop. Let’s just say, some brands were too zealous. They handed over content creation to generative A.I. tools and believed whatever it produced was factually accurate and of high quality. What they forgot is that lots of other brands were doing the same thing. And customers were getting tired of being fed slop. Lots of it. To the point where it created customer mistrust, leading to erosion of brand loyalty and value. Remember, it is much easier to erode a brand than to rebuild one. Customers never truly forget a brand’s misstep in trust and loyalty. So, it may seem cheaper to hand over brand value to A.I., but the damage it can create without human oversight can be extremely costly.

Noel: I guess awareness that A.I. is a sort of “introduced risk” is key. What should brands be doing now to avoid that kind of damage?​

Susan: It’s really simple. Lead with humans. We’re moving into the next phase of A.I., agentic, referring to the autonomous bots with no human oversight. It’s scary when you think of it. We still don’t fully understand artificial intelligence, and now we’re going to let it go off and do the work on its own. Imagine an A.I. bot programmed to interact with customers without human oversight or intervention. We’re seeing it now, and the results are worrying. Think back to when you reached out to customer service for an issue, and you’re forced to interact with a chatbot! How do you perceive the brand? Probably negatively. The same with content creation. We’re seeing brands using generative models to create customer-facing content. Without human oversight, the results can be disastrous for the brand and dangerous for the customer.

Noel: Sounds like A.I. is the super smart intern that’s not ready to have the keys to the shop. So, what’s your advice to brands?

Susan: Lead with people. Forward-thinking brands understand the value of building and maintaining brand authority is grounded in trust. And they work hard to maintain and grow their customers’ trust. They have a voice. An authentic voice. One that understands their customers and doesn’t cut corners. Demonstrating that sense of value by communicating authentically. Yes, there is a place for artificial intelligence, but not letting it rule is key. Human-driven creation and oversight, in my opinion, is the best way forward for brands that truly understand brand value in an A.I. World.

Noel: Thanks, Susan, for reassuring us that humans will always have a place in brand strategy.

Rain strategist and cofounder Noel Thevenet sat down with copywriter Bill Fahber to talk about how copywriting is being reshaped by the A.I revolution. Here are excerpts from their conversation.

Noel: So, is A.I. taking over copywriting?

Bill: In many ways, yes. And it should. Everyone should be using A.I., especially LLMs [Large Language Models]. But it has to be used wisely. A.I. can now do 80% of the work. But brands will live or die on how they master that final 20%. And that’s where most fall into traps. The tricky part is, this is all still new. Most clients won’t recognize the traps until they’ve already stumbled into them. And we’re seeing that happen a lot.

“A.I. can now do 80% of the work. But brands will live or die on how they master that final 20%.”

Bill Fahber – Head Copywriter, Rain

Noel: What kind of traps?

Bill: There are plenty. People joke about the overuse of em dashes, but that’s nothing compared to deeper structural flaws. A classic one is contrast framing – hyping up a benefit by dismissing a lesser alternative. For example: “It’s not just a vacation – it’s happiness on the beach.” Or “It’s more than a car. It’s a lifestyle on wheels.”

The technique itself isn’t bad. But an LLM can’t help overdoing it. It’ll spit out five of these over the span of a few hundred words. The result is heavy and repetitive copy. The same thing happens with choppy rhythms, repetitive patterns, and other strange obsessions. You can re-prompt all you want, but the model always slides back into these strange obsessions.

Noel: Studies show that consumers don’t like brands using A.I. How would they even know?

Bill: Any experienced writer can sniff out A.I. copy instantly. And I suspect frequent LLM users can too. You start to recognize its fingerprints. But the real issue isn’t using A.I. The real issue is depending on it entirely. A.I. is fast, cheap, and near-perfect with grammar. But it’s also bland. It can lack creativity and personality.

By design, it’s average. An LLM is trained on millions of data sets – what other people have already written. It doesn’t invent. It just recombines. So it can only ever be as good as what it has been fed.

Noel: Won’t the quality get better over time?

Bill: Maybe. But in the short term, it feels like the opposite is happening. LLMs are becoming inbred. With so much A.I.-generated content flooding the internet, the models are increasingly training on their own output. So, they’re literally inbreeding.

That means whatever they’re weak at, they’re only going to get weaker at. I imagine engineers will eventually find ways to refresh the training data, but for now the trend seems to be heading downhill.

Noel: You sound pessimistic for someone who champions A.I.

Bill: Oh no, I’m very optimistic. A.I. tools like LLMs are powerful. But they’re only as good as the people who use them. If you don’t know what quality, high-impact writing looks like, how can you tell when the machine is giving you junk? If you haven’t spent years A/B testing effective writing mechanics, how do you know what will perform best in direct-response copy? That’s why I always say, as a senior copywriter, A.I. is better in my hands than it is in yours.

Noel: So how has the role of senior copywriter changed?

Bill: The creative side hasn’t changed much. The clients who want real ideas still need real creatives. Even if we use A.I. to brainstorm, the copywriter has to know which sparks are worth fanning into fire.

What has really changed is the balance of the work. There’s less raw execution, more editorial strategy. Brands still need style guides and editorial frameworks. And if they want to make the most of LLMs to write in-house, they need senior-level specialists to show them how and help them build their tools.

Noel: You mean, custom GPTs?

Bill: Exactly! We can now create custom GPTs that follow brand guidelines, house style, and vocabulary. They can even act as watchdogs on CSR claims to help avoid greenwashing. That means you don’t always need a copywriter looking over your shoulder. Instead, you bring in a senior copywriter or editorial consultant to help you build your custom GPT: feed it, train it, test it, and show you how to use it.

And then, instead of distributing old-school editorial-guideline documents and hoping people follow them – which they rarely do – we can now work the guidelines into custom GPTs in-house. In theory, that means every piece of copy aligns automatically with a consistent brand voice.

Large enterprises are already developing their own A.I. and LLM platforms and working with writers to fine-tune them. But smaller companies and agencies that don’t mind using cloud-based systems can do the same with ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever LLM they’re comfortable with.

So much of this is still new, and we’re learning as we go. But these are exciting times!

Noel: No question about that. Thanks, Bill!